Relative Growth Score: A Better Way to Assess Learning Process in Anesthesia

Abstract

Before target student assessment, tests for norm- and criterion-referenced assessment are conducted under a table of specifications for cognitive, affective and psychomotor domains—essential steps in the learning process. These steps are well-validated for construct and content validity, reliability, objectivity, difficulty, and discrimination. Generally, achievement scores are performed for summative evaluation, while relative growth scores are considered formative scores.

In practice, relative growth scores are applied to students’ academic assessment via examination tests of parallelism of equality more than once. Then achievement scores are compared and correlated with referenced, pre-test scores. Therefore, the relative growth score is an estimated value with greater confidence that can fairly represent students’ intention, interests, and educational improvement.  As a result, it is appropriate to apply in both theory and practice to residency, nurse anesthetists and medical students training programs and to those with different maturity, knowledge and clinical experience.